OUR HONOLULU
Be ready for simplicity, sharing when in Marshall Islands
By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist
AILINGLAPLAP ATOLL, Marshall Islands — To visit this lovely, remote necklace of islands where credit cards are useless and money has limited value, an invitation from the iroij (chief) or a local family is essential. On Ailinglaplap there is no hotel or restaurant.
A friendly, 50-year-old woman with a brown, wrinkled face checks passengers flying twin-engine, 20-seat Air Marshall Islands planes. She sits at a little table in one corner of a shack beside the coral landing strip using a bathroom scale that's 15 pounds off to weigh you and your luggage.
That luggage should include a tent, only washable clothes, a sleeping bag and a mat or air mattress if you're used to sleeping on a soft bed.
Be prepared to bathe out of a bucket and wash your clothes in it because fresh water on Ailinglaplap is more precious than gold. It's rain water that runs off tin roofs into catchment tanks.
Bob Krauss • The Honolulu Advertiser
Women visitors should pack billowy mu'umu'u made of fabric that dries quickly because it's often difficult to bathe in privacy. The accepted procedure for women is to bathe under a mu'umu'u and let it dry in the sun.
On Sunday afternoon, housewives on Ailinglaplap Atoll dry the laundry in the front yard. The kitchen is in back.
The awesome immensity of ocean and sky, and the wind-swept beaches of Ai-linglaplap create an impression of loneliness that is in direct contrast to the intimacy of life under the stately palm trees. The clutter of a coconut grove and shabby houses is in contrast to spick-and-span yards and the cleanliness of the people.
Reming Ring teaches in a school of 200 students, grades one through eight on the island of Woja. He earns $9,500 a year teaching and adds to his income by making copra, shipping fish to Majuro and running one of the five little general stores on the island.
He owns three motor vehicles, which gives him upper-middle-class status on Woja, an island with five miles of road. Most people walk or ride bicycles. Every family has a little fishing canoe.
I asked him what he had for dinner. He listed breadfruit, rice, a little fish and Hawaiian iced tea from the store cooler. The cooler is powered by a gasoline generator that runs a few hours when necessary. Otherwise, Ring's electricity comes from solar panels that cost him three times as much in Majuro, the capital, as they do in Honolulu.
Even well-to-do families cook in a little kitchen shack beside the house either on a fire pit that burns coconut husk or a kerosene stove. The store sells kerosene and gasoline in cans, rice, flour, cigarettes and Coke. No liquor is allowed on the atolls.
Everybody on Ailinglaplap is a jack-of-all-trades because there are no professional mechanics. Relatives and neighbors are essential for construction projects.
Bob Krauss • The Honolulu Advertiser
Sharing is a primary rule on Ai-linglaplap so don't take if you don't plan to give back. Don't give one kid a piece of candy unless you have enough for 15 because they will appear by magic.
Racing model outrigger canoes, or riwuds, is a favorite hobby on Ailinglaplap Atoll. Despite their size, they can go up to 15 knots.
After our gang had put up tents, I gave three kids two M&Ms each to place coconuts to line a path so we wouldn't stumble over roots in the dark. By the time our road construction project was finished, it had cost me nine M&Ms each for 13 kids who kept piling on the coconuts.
The thing about kids on the atolls is that they are shy, quiet and well behaved. They hadn't heard of Honolulu.
One of the popular hobbies on Ailinglaplap and the other atolls is racing model outrigger sailing canoes called riwuds, or something like that. Not only kids but men all over the Marshall Islands build them ranging in size from 2 or 3 feet to 7 feet.
Riwuds look dainty but they go like bats out of hell up to 15 knots. Sailing riwuds on Keehi Lagoon would be a terrific sport. Iroij Mike Kabua, chief of a dozen atolls, has built seven.
For a week, riwuds cluttered the island of Bouj, his chiefly estate. Seventy of them entered the largest race in riwud history on the exact beach where riwuds were invented. It began with a legend, of course. Here it is:
A boy on this beach at Bouj sailed his pet shark as a riwud. His mother told him not to because she was a rat and would be ashamed if somebody discovered them living in the bushes. The boy disobeyed.
A servant of the iroij spied the boy sailing his shark riwud and the secret was out. The iroij ordered that the boy and his mother be brought before him. The mother wept so hard that the boy cried, too. She comforted him.
"Don't worry," she said. "Take me to the lagoon and duck me under." The boy pushed his mother under water. She came up a beautiful woman but her hair was still short like a rat. "Duck me again," she said. This time her hair was long and silky.
The minute the iroij laid eyes on her he fell in love and married her. Kabua hauled out his 'ukulele and sang the riwud song. It has a delightful, lively, lilting melody.
Reach Bob Krauss at 525-0873.
